Hi guys – thanks for all the continued support! Really appreciate all your kind and encouraging reviews. I think there's one more part after this….

Rosalee was relieved to see that a degree of triage had been arranged before she'd even arrived, and the 30-odd wesen in the lodge were arranged by cot, chair or sitting on the floor. She did the flat-out wesen first, starting with Bud and Janie as the most severe cases. They whimpered distantly throughout, apologising into perpetuity for causing so much bother. "Just thought it was a cold…" Janie kept repeating, through sobs, and Rosalee couldn't stay mad. It was clear that they were suffering an acute case of shame which was hurting them far more than the strain of Biberflu they'd contracted. She rolled down their sleeves, told them to get some rest. At least the shots worked really quickly.

Halfway into the queue, she reached the head of the Oregon Lauffer: her father's best friend and monumental pain in the butt, Walther 'the doctor' Maier. Maier was stranded in Jaberbar form, as was the groaning Frank Rabe beside him, but was nonetheless well enough to irritate the tits off her with his usual 'Godfather' delusions. He'd never talk to her, or anyone else, straight on. All conversations took place at an angle, with him looking sideways in a dangerous and speculative way. God only knew what his chiropractor bill was like. She'd always felt that he was about as menacing as a slice of quiche. But then, the people whose businesses he'd sunk would probably disagree with her there.

"Hey Calvert, thanks for coming. Appreciate it."

Quite impressive, actually, that he managed to sound even hoarser than usual. She gave him a thin smile. "It's fine." She rolled up his sleeve and prepared the shot.

"You put on a great day yesterday. It's just a shame about…" he waved a vague hand around at the aftermath in the lodge.

"Tell me about it."

"You raise a lot?"

Rosalee groaned inwardly. He was going to bring up the goddamn lab again. She was not having a lab in her wellness centre. Period. "Raised enough, and still – no thanks."

"You don't pull your punches, huh?"

If he'd take a damn hint, she wouldn't have to.

"Take a look around, kiddo. What does this incident tell you?"

"That sick bibers should be locked up. Excuse me." She moved onto Frank Rabe, who was ready to slide off his chair with fatigue. "You weren't here yesterday – how come you're sick?"

"Poker buddies," Rabe muttered, sticking his arms out. "Maier invited me round for a nice evening of faro and flu."

Maier butted back in. "What this incident tells me is that unless we got treatments on tap, we get problems. 'Specially now we're all mixing socially more. Jags and Bibers in a room sharing coffee? Wouldn't have happened a year ago. And now I wouldn't have it any other way but this comes at a cost – pandemics. We gotta make stocks, gotta sell emergency stuff over your counter…"

"That part I'm happy with. That's why I did the fundraiser. You do the clever stuff, I'll sell the stocks. But I'm not having a lab on my premises."

"I don't know why you're struggling so much with this. You want to cure sick wesen. I want to cure sick wesen! What's wrong with a partnership?"

"You're researching cures for gemischtwesen! I know how important it is to advance the science on mixed-breed, but I have my own life. I do not want verrat turning my place over because they don't like what I'm doing. Monny and Burkhardt have their own issues, their own jobs. I'm not having them feel like they need to watch over me all the time." She considered the homeless hippo currently taking up residence in their rear basement and groaned. "Besides, things are kind of crowded already. I've no room for a chemist as well."

Maier looked utterly baffled. "What? Why do you think I sent you Hilde? Apart from the security aspect, of course."

Rosalee tried to imagine the somnambulant Nilpherdine tiptoeing through the test tubes, expertly putting together tinctures. More immediately, she saw a pile of broken glass and a multi-coloured puddle. "If I had a lab, and I'm certainly not saying I'm going to, I wouldn't let Hilde near it. If you're gonna stand there waffling, do some injections, please. I've got a sick Grimm to get back to."

"You wouldn't let Hilde 'the chemist' Zimmermann into a lab? You guys got some kind of personality clash thing going on?"

Rabe straightened up and pulled his sleeve down. "Why do they call her 'the chemist?' She a poisoner, or something?"

"Uh, no. Granted, she's not much of a people person, but they call her 'the chemist' because she's … a chemist. Ok, it lacks imagination, but we gotta keep things concise in the Lauffer."

"So, not a nurse," Rosalee muttered darkly.

"Nurse?" Maier laughed weakly. "What the hell gave you that idea? I hope she hasn't been treating anyone you actually like." Rosalee glared at Maier until he should've felt burning in his fur. So, he'd sent her Hilde 'the chemist' pre-emptively? She was temporarily speechless with rage and scared the crap out of the young teenage Eis she was in the middle of treating. "Sorry, go." The kid did, and the Eis behind him scrabbled behind each other not to be next.

She was going to send Hilde back to Bayern in a suitcase. No, scrap that, she'd send Hilde back to Bayern as the suitcase. She struggled to remember whether Hilde had actually said she was a nurse at any point, and in honesty, she couldn't: but she'd nodded her way knowledgeably round the entire stock tour, and thrown in a few intelligent questions about the spices. She must have mentioned 'after-care', 'holistic nursing', 'nursing care' about twenty times and not once had the dopey hippo contradicted her. Rosie sighed as she beckoned up the next timid Eis. She should've suspected something when she'd seen Hilde's unsubtle approach to tackling Nick's hyperthermia.

Rabe was getting irate in the background. "Just to check, then, you're Walther 'the doctor' Maier. I have to know. Are you actually a doctor?"

"Uh… yeah." Maier woged back to human through sheer sheepishness. "Qualified in '82. Also not a people person, so I went into pharmac—"

"Fuck's sake! Why don't you just call yourself Dr Maier and be done with it? I thought it was really sinister! You know how many games of poker I've 'lost' to you just 'cause I thought it was sinister?"

"Guys – shut up. Rabe, go home."

"Gladly!" The shifted lawyer stomped off, muttering under his breath about dumbass almost-gangsters.

Rosalee fixed Maier with the kind of glare she usually reserved for shoplifters after her tincture of prickle poppy. "Understand this, Dr Maier, I will not be strong-armed. You sent me Hilde assuming that I'd agree to the lab, didn't you?"

"Well yeah, and for security—"

"I don't give a blue Reinigen's ass whether she's with us as a bouncer, chemist or goddamn tealady! If she's not in danger, I want her gone. I am not a Lauffer boarding house!"

Maier gave an exaggerated shrug as a nervous maushertz stepped into the seat in front of him and bared her arm. "I gotta say, I'm kinda disappointed, Rosie. Your father and I were like this-" he did the best-buddy cross with his fingers, "and I was kind of under the impression that you'd taken on the family business."

"You keep harassing me, pal, and you'll be walking like this—" she did the excruciating-pain-between-the-legs cross with her fingers "for the rest of your natural life."

"Fine. My mistake. Ian told me you put him up. Said you had a lot of stones and that you seemed up on your Lauffer lore. Well, I just hope that having Hilde with you for a few days hasn't put any of you in any danger."

Rosie considered Nick's state of health and had a burning urge to get back home before he could be subjected to any more TLC. Then she listened to Maier in retrospect. "So Hilde isn't just your annoying plant – she's actually at risk?"

"Yeah – she killed a Hundjager and she's kind of easy to spot. It's gonna be a bummer trying to move her."

"Not my problem," Rosie sing-songed. "What did she do to the Hundjager?"

Maier paled. "I can't tell you about it – it's just … unspeakable. But you know, offer's still on the table. Don't knock it out the park just yet. Look, do me a favour and take my advice - even if you don't take up my offer, please keep hold of Hilde for just…another… couple of days. "

"Or what?"

"Well, just for example, I wouldn't want anything unfortunate to happen to your sick Grim—WHOA, CALVERT! GET OFF!"

Monroe stuck Nick back on the cot for the third time in 24 hours, feeling - though he didn't think it was possible - even lousier than the last two times he'd stuck the Grimm in bed. The rest room seemed to be getting a lot of action for a place that wasn't actually open for business. He almost expected to hear someone say from behind, director-style: "Ok there Eddie, let's put the Grimm in the bed one last time, but this time let's do it joyfully."

Joyful, he was not. Nick was still out, and burning up something terrible. He'd dared to hope for the first couple of minutes that Nick had done a basic pain pass-out, like when you leave a room too quickly and catch your groin on the door handle. But through Nick's increasingly sweaty groans and Matty's discontented growling at enforced yoghurt, Monroe could hear Nick's breathing get worse and worse. He should call Rosie now – actually no, she would say 'get oxygen on him and take his temp'. So he'd do that before he called. He didn't particularly want to be ripped a new asshole for sending the pneumatic Grimm out in 10 degrees after a hippo that wasn't supposed to leave the house.

First oxygen. He needed to get the oxygen. It was downstairs. Rats.

Matty did a spectacular roar in response to a spoonful of unwanted raspberry and Monroe felt it was time to join forces. He nudged Nick gently up the bed, dashed over to Matty, freed him from the booster seat and ponked him in the gap between nick's side and the edge of the bed. "Right, kiddo I've got to pop downstairs. If the hippo gets close, roar."

Matty looked uncertainly at his nemesis and back to Monroe. His expression was so grown up Monroe would have burst out laughing any other time. Dude, you're bigger. You roar at the lady and let me know how you get on.

"Earn your keep!"

"Urr."

"Convincingly!"

Hilde glared at him as she took the dirty bowls into the kitchenette. "This is rude and unnecessary. I have no intention of harming the Grimm."

She had no intention of leaving the poor guy alone, either. Monroe was halfway back up the stairs, heaving the tank behind him and cussing himself for an idiot for not sending Hilde down to get it herself, when Matty went off on a roaring fit. He turned the corner out of the basement and saw Nick tossing fitfully on the bed, babbling distressedly as Hilde leant over him.

"No, no no… NO! NO!"

"Is just pillows!"

"MOVE!" Monroe hip-checked her, getting his own back from yesterday as she crashed across the room, grabbed the oxygen and put the mask over Nick's face, flicking the dial on with the side of his spare hand. He lifted Nick's head to pull the strap over the back and wiped his hair out of his face with his sleeve. Nick came round suddenly, his eyes wide and unfocussed, and Monroe lightly kept his head still, trying to keep his voice light, clear and distinct. "Buddy, it's me. You're fine. You're safe."

"Wherz… wherzer dangrus hippo?"

"No more Hilde TLC. I promise. You're fine. But you're pretty hot. We need to cool you down some."

"'Kay…" and he was out again, breathing too hard, but looking a little more composed.

Hilde the implacable was back at Monroe's side. "What is wrong with him?"

"Let me see – you get near, and he has a panic attack. Hilde, these events are not coincidental! What were you doing to him?"

"I was fluffing his pillow."

"WELL, DON'T! He's in enough pain already, ok?"

"Rawrr!"

"Ok so maybe he is a little scared of me after the injection. But what is wrong with him? I mean the sickness, not the panicky thing."

Monroe suddenly felt really tired again. "I don't know. I guess he didn't have enough time to get rid of the pneumonia."

"No, Rosie treat that. This is something else." She sounded very definite for a not-nurse and Monroe looked at her curiously as she went on. "The antibiotikum, the shot she give, it worked immediately on him as it does with all wesen. He was well this morning. Now he has a different infection in his chest. He needs… I don't know it in English. Antientzündlich."

"Anti-inflammatories. I get it." Monroe considered. Maybe the problem was that Nick wasn't wesen, although he must share a degree of biology to be able to see them. God, he hoped they hadn't actually poisoned him… "So you're not a nurse, but you do know a lot of this stuff?"

"I am the chemist," she said simply.

"That explains everything!"

"I have been working on gemischtwesen medicine for twenty years. For people like Matty – you know, half-and-halfs. The Reinen, the 'pure' verrat, they don't like it. They send the hundjager after me."

Monroe stared and went to grab his phone. He could really do with having his fearsome missus back in the house. "What did you do?"

"I kill him."

"Stay back." Great, so he had a Lauffer assassin on his hands. "How did you kill him? Poison?"

"Why does everyone assume this? No, he break into my house! He was armed and I was not so I hit him with the armchair and sit on him."

"God!"

"Yeah, it was awful. There was much… wriggling."

Monroe shook his head to clear his mind's eye of the image of a thrashing, crushed hundjager. Something more concerning had come to mind. Hundjagen hunted in pairs. "Did you see anyone when you ran out earlier?"

"She shrugged. I didn't really notice. I was upset."

"Great. I'm calling Rosalee. Tell her to keep her eyes out on her way back. If you want to be useful, get some cold cloths and the temperature strip. But give them to me. Stay away from Nick. Ok?"

She looked… genuinely wounded. "I wouldn't hurt Nick. He is…. nice to me."

"He is nice. Just be nice back… from a distance. And please shut the back door properly? It's been slamming open all evening. It's like having a twitchy percussionist round the place."

There was another slam, presumably Hilde closing the door, that made Monroe jump as he dialled Rosie's number, and then Hilde returned with the temperature strip. He clapped it on Nick's head, watched the green shift to yellow, then orange and red, sail past 38.5° and didn't actually know whether to wait for Rosie to answer or dial 911.

"SOMEONE GET THIS CRAZY VIXEN OFF OF ME!"

The remaining queue of Bibers scrabbled not to help as Rosalee kept hold of Maier's jacket lapels and shook him wrathfully. "YOU… STAY…THE…HELL…AWAY…FROM…BURKHARDT!"

"I was being sincere, for God's sake! I don't want anything unfortunate happening to the Grimm! How often do we get one on our side? And stop throwing yourself around like that, you'll have an aneurism."

Maier clapped his hands on her shoulders, bringing her to an abrupt halt, and she let go, feeling vaguely concussed. Talk about embarrassing, losing it enough to try to shake a bear. She climbed off him in a temper and he clambered back up from his half-sprawled butt-on-floor position, looking bemused.

"You said he was sick. I was concerned! I think I was one of the last one or two guys to see him yesterday, and he looked pretty glassy-eyed by then. Mind you, after a pack of dirkfellig…."

"Alright." She got her breath back. The anger just wouldn't leave her alone these days. It was like being in season except she was a little late. "Sorry. It's just… the first actually threatening thing I ever heard you say. It took me by surprise."

"Took you by surprise? Jeez Calvert, you've got to get yourself some tranqs. Anyway, what's up with the Grimm?"

"He's recovering from pneumonia. The shots we gave him worked really well, but it'll take a few days for him to get past it properly. Apparently he'd passed out on Eddie a few moments before I left and had to be put back to bed."

Maier frowned. "He's recovering from pneumonia? So he had it yesterday? During the event?"

"Yeah. And then he passed out on us straight afterwards. Look, Monroe and I have shared a lot of guilt overnight for that so, if we could not go there…"

"He was on his feet for over two hours! Extraordinary. Well, it kind of demonstrates what I've always suspected about Grimms. Acquired analgesia. Didn't you get any blood samples?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"I'm not sticking needles into him while he's asleep because he's my friend, and that would be creepy and weird. I'm going to let him get better, have a much fuller chat about his pain threshold levels, and then, only if he's interested, get some labwork done."

Maier rolled his eyes. "God, you're obstinate. Ok. Do what you want, but you know the drill – speaking as a doctor here, not as a Lauffer – keep him indoors, keep him warm and completely away from any source of infection. The multi-burdock shots are good for acute infection, but they can wipe out the natural immune system for a few days – what?"

Rosalee froze. Nick had helped her get Matty indoors. Matty had been handed to them by Bud and Janie – pretty much full of germs. "I gotta go." Her phone rang, and she answered to Monroe, whose voice exploded out the speaker like a panicky gerbil on helium. She repeated the symptoms back to Maier, who nodded.f

"Fine, just give me the stuff, I can carry on here. Have you got enough spare to take back with you?"

"Yeah." She emptied out as much of her bag as she dared, and ran for the doorway. He caught her up and handed her a yellow vial. "This goes straight into the source of infection. It'll hurt like hell, but work in about ten minutes. If that doesn't work, try 911, but do not mention me as the source of that stuff. It's not exactly… AMA tested."

Rosie took the yellow vial and ran. If the yellow vial didn't work, it wasn't the AMA Maier had to worry about. It was Monroe.